10/18/2016

A few weeks ago Joe Manganiello decided to stop stripping in gas station convenience stores and suit up as Deathstroke (which kinda sounds like a stripper name) in Ben Affleck's The Batman. It was one of the few genuine pieces of news we've had on the film, and it's paying dividends because the loose-lipped actor has let slip when Affleck plans to begin shooting.

Speaking with ET, Manganiello said that he was "getting ready to go shoot Batman in the spring." Presumably that would be next spring not spring 2025 or something like that. Following that timetable we could see the film in theaters maybe in late 2018, which would fit the release window for most of the movies Affleck has directed.

Of course, those also tended to be Oscar-qualifying films and surely there aren't expectations like that, are there? It may seem weird to think of a superhero movie as an Oscar contender but really we aren't that far removed from Christopher Nolan's trilogy which earned nine nominations and two wins.